Australian jockey Kerrin McEvoy is riding for history, as he seeks a record-equaling fourth Melbourne Cup win on Monday night. McEvoy will partner 5-2 favorite Deauville Legend, under strikingly similar circumstances to his previous victory four years ago.
Melbourne Cup Day is an annual public holiday in the state of Victoria, and a post-pandemic party of more than 100,000 people will flood Flemington Racecourse. The crowd will give the Cup field two raucous cheers, as the 24 runners pass the stands twice during their two-mile odyssey. First post in the U.S. is 7:45 p.m. Eastern / 4:45 p.m. Pacific, and the wonderful spectacle of Australia's most famous race is scheduled for 8 p.m. Pacific / 11 p.m. Eastern.
In 161 Melbourne Cups, only two jockeys have managed four wins: Bobby Lewis in the early decades of last century, and Harry White in the 1970s (White died 11 days before this year's Cup).
In 2000, 20-year-old Kerrin McEvoy became the second-youngest rider to win the race. A third-place finish two years later on a Godolphin-owned horse led to McEvoy being contracted as the stable's number two European rider (behind Frankie Dettori). The young Aussie's successful stint yielded 120 winners in Europe, including six at Group 1 level. He has since carved out a highly successful freelance career in his homeland, winning a second Melbourne Cup in 2016 and the first two runnings of The Everest in 2017-'18. In the 2018 Melbourne Cup, McEvoy delivered his old employer a global prize that Godolphin had coveted and pursued for two decades, as Cross Counter became the first English-trained winner.
On Monday night, McEvoy will get a leg up on another British invader, whose profile is almost a mirror image of his rider's 2018 winner.
Like Cross Counter, #8 Deauville Legend is a lightly raced 3-year-old (classified as 4 in the southern hemisphere, where the season begins on Aug. 1). Deauville Legend has contested the same races at Royal Ascot, Goodwood and York. The parallels with Cross Counter are less surprising when one considers that Deauville Legend's trainer, James Ferguson, is a son of former Godolphin chief executive John Ferguson – and worked as an assistant to trainer Charlie Appleby, who conditioned Cross Counter!
Tellingly, Deauville Legend left a horse named El Bodegon four lengths in his wake at York; El Bodegon recently made his Australian debut with an excellent third-place finish in a top-quality weight-for-age race, the Cox Plate. The only query against Deauville Legend is his lack of experience on a wet track (guaranteed for Monday night). After the Melbourne Cup, Ferguson will turn his attention to Keeneland, where he has Mise En Scene pre-entered as the also eligible in both the Breeders' Cup Turf and the Filly & Mare Turf.
As a two-mile handicap, contention runs deep in every renewal of the Melbourne Cup. Here are some other horses of interest:
#1 Gold Trip (14-1): Only win was more than two years ago, but has earned $1.5 million and the highweight of 127 pounds (the Melbourne Cup is a handicap race). Finished fourth in the 2020 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe; based in Australia for the past year. Luckless last start after a good second in the G1 Caulfield Cup, traditionally Australia's most important and productive prep race.
#4 Montefilia (10-1): Her fourth placing in the Caulfield Cup, at 1 1/2 miles, was unlucky and eye-catching – the best performance in the race. Multiple G1 winner whose only query is the distance.
#6 Without A Fight (10-1): British gelding; brings a pleasing 17:7-3-4 record to his Australian debut. Consecutive wins at 1 3/4 miles during the summer at York; William Buick rides for the Newmarket-based Crisford stable.
#7 Camorra (50-1): Irish gelding, victorious in the G2 Curragh Cup – a race won by two of the last five Melbourne Cup winners. Debuts for an Australian stable.
#10 Vow And Declare (20-1): 2019 Melbourne Cup winner who lost all form … until this campaign. Several recent efforts have been most encouraging. Since he's been in the wilderness for so long, he has dropped way lower in the weights (119 pounds) than a past Melbourne Cup winner would normally be.
#13 Serpentine (80-1): Another whose last win is a distant memory, but oh-so-significant. The 2020 English Derby winner has been lightly raced since; could be trending the right way with an improved last-start second.
#24 Realm of Flowers (11-1): It's also a long time between drinks for this mare, whose last win was 18 months ago. However, it came in a Flemington stakes race at 1 3/4 miles and she was forced to miss almost a year. Has placed at this distance and is effective on wet tracks. Carries a featherweight of 110 pounds.
While the Melbourne Cup crowd drinks bottomless mimosas, “country battlers” will drink from Sydney racing's bottomless well of rich innovations. Australian racing has three tiers: metropolitan (major city tracks), provincial and country. A staggering $2 million purse is up for grabs at Royal Randwick in the inaugural running of The Big Dance (Race 5), for horses who finished first or second in any of 25 Country Cups within the state of New South Wales. (It is barely an exaggeration to say that every Aussie town has a pub, a post office and a racetrack!) Favoritism rests with #5 Hosier (4-1), whose jockey has danced on the sport's biggest stages globally. Frankie Dettori rode for the first time in Sydney this past Friday night, and will ride Monday night's card before jetting off to the Breeders' Cup. Hosier won the Coffs Harbour Cup (300 miles north of Sydney's world-famous harbour) at The Big Dance's one-mile distance, then repeated the result at Randwick.
Apart from Flemington, no fewer than 30 Australian tracks will conduct live Thoroughbred racing on Melbourne Cup Day. The majority will be bucolic settings that race only a handful of days per year, but which draw colorful, enthusiastic crowds to celebrate “the race that stops a nation.” The sheer volume of venues translates into opportunities for up-and-coming race callers. One of the first full cards I announced was on Melbourne Cup Day in 1983, and it pleases me to see that Kumbia (100 miles from my hometown of Brisbane) is still welcoming fans almost four decades later. The buoyancy of Australian “country” racing lies in stark contrast to the disappearance of most small tracks in the United States, which is to the detriment of communities and of people aspiring to gain experience in the sport – whether it be in the tack room, the racing office or the announcer's booth.
The Flemington card (AUS-A) Randwick card (AUS-B) and will be broadcast on FanDuel TV this Friday night (First Post: 7:45 p.m. ET / 4:45 p.m. PT) alongside cards from Kembla Grange (AUS-C) and Eagle Farm (AUS-D), and. All races will be live-streamed in HD on the new Sky Racing World App, skyracingworld.com and major ADW platforms such as TVG, TwinSpires, Xpressbet, NYRABets, WatchandWager, HPIbet, and AmWager. Wagering is also available via these ADW platforms. Fans can get free access to live-streaming, past performances and expert picks on all races at skyracingworld.com.
About Michael Wrona A native of Brisbane, Australia, Michael Wrona has called races in six countries. Michael's vast U.S. experience includes; race calling at Los Alamitos, Hollywood Park, Arlington and Santa Anita, calling the 2000 Preakness on a national radio network and the 2016 Breeders' Cup on the International simulcast network. Michael also performed a race call voiceover for a Seinfeld episode called The Subway.
The post The Melbourne Cup Legend: McEvoy Hoping To Ride Into History Books In ‘Race That Stops A Nation’ appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
